Path 2- Nothing Here is as it Seems

This blog is #3 in a series about caterpillars and changing, it is about me and healing and it is about many people, please read the last 2 blogs if you have not.

As I pushed past the forest on path 2 in my vision, I came out to the other side and at first I could not see anything. Then the landscape came into focus, it was glorious. Orangey rock formations some with holes against a deep blue sky. The sun setting caused the striking colors. As I looked around I asked if other people were there and was told yes but I would meet them later. This place was were I needed to learn to be content with just God and I.

As I stared at the rock formations and the fluffy white clouds they started to move, change and become something else. I asked what was happening and was told that nothing here was what it seemed and that included me.

Things were moving and changing. God gave me the scripture of Elisha and his servant who was so scared of what his eyes could see - a warring human army, a sea of men, coming at them. Elisha prayed for the servants eyes to be opened to see the spiritual, and he was able to see God’s heavenly army of fiery chariots surrounding and protecting them. (2 Kings 6:17)

God repeated to me, “nothing is as it seems.”

That means I am not even as I seem, you are not you seem. I had no idea path 2 was more healing for me. I wanted it to be a ministry or a place of meaningful activity. I wanted to be up and moving, getting back to normal life again. I cannot believe instead it is a moving, morphing intangible world where “nothing is as it seems.” It is almost like 2 Corinthians 3:18 has come to life.

“And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed (original is Greek word, metamorphoo, which means to undergo a profound, inward transformation), into His image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”

Healing is a one person journey. No one can heal for you, no one can heal with you, it is your own private journey. As I now know I am in the middle of my cocoon metamorphosis, probably in the slick, sludgey part I am having to ponder what is happening. My physical body is not quite at the same level as my spiritual body. Why?

All the pieces must be involved for a caterpillar to turn into a butterfly. All the pieces must work together to make a tadpole into a frog. All my pieces are not working at the same time right now in my body.

I think for me and possibly for many, we stay in the thick sludgey soup because we are not sure what to do with our emotions. Yes, those feelings that we are not sure what to do with and often we have no idea how to describe or explain them. Many of us grew up not talking about feelings rather we were shut down if we tried. Big girls don’t cry. Boys are tough! We were not even given language to describe them.

According to Chip Dodd in his book Voice of the Heart, there are 8 primary emotions:

Hurt

Lonely

Sad

Guilt

Anger

Fear

Shame

Glad

Under these come subcategories, for example anxiety could be under fear and shame.

For me, I look at the list and see 4 that rock my world right off the batt. What do I do with that, it causes me to be uncomfortable, we people hate to be uncomfortable.

Big hurts are not easy. Yes we first have to identify what we feel, then ask if this is a new feeling or one we keep having, making it about something from the past. We ask God when did this start? Because I might have it today as a continuation from something that happened years ago.

Look back at our list of emotion words and see if any of them is speaking to you.

Ask God to help you identify it.

For each word on the list there may be a few levels to work through. For me the word “hurt” means: physical pain of the affects of immunotherapy and surgery. Hurt from pain of loss of Brian, Martha and Mocha. Hurt also means I feel God has allowed me to get harmed so I am mad at Him too. So this one word “hurt” and I have to work through several levels, physical, emotional, spiritual. That takes time.

The past 6 years on this property, oh my goodness it has been wild. We have learned so much on this property about the physical and the spiritual. We live in a physical world but we also are surrounded by a spiritual world. Some of you have heard some of our bizarre stories where we simply cannot explain certain things that happen here. That would be because nothing is as it seems!

I am starting to get it! I teach this! I am a spirit and soul being housed in a physical body and the spiritual is just as important as the physical. They must both coexist together. Just because my eyes see only the physical does not mean the spiritual does not exist. It does! Our worldly system, the medical system only focuses on the physical and we often forget that we are much more than just physical.

God created us, mankind and in Genesis 2 it says God breathed the breath of life into us. That is how we got our “spirit”.

Our body is the physical housing of us.

The soul is our will, intellect and emotions our natural who we are.

The spirit is our innermost part and gives us the ability to commune and know God.

“For who knows a person's thoughts except their own spirit within them?" 1 Corinthians 2:11

Ecclesiastes 12:7 mentions that at death the "spirit returns to God who gave it.”

Healing means that both the spiritual and the physical need healing and when our healing is complete in a perfectly healthy way… all the sides of me, and all the sides of you are able to coexist together.

For me at this moment, one side has healed faster than the other - I am lopsided. Not wrong, not shameful, it just simply is, in this soupy mess of morphing into a whole person. But God… He knows what I need. He knows how to heal and put broken pieces together again. I may have a ways to go but I can truly say, “thank God”.